Stranger in a strange land: Memories of Scotland

Day 1

"Ajfxrtr jrrr uwg fgnkrng?" The girl at the immigration asked me. I looked uncomprehendingly at her.

She tried again, "Fheryjf sf krhg gtekjgfa sdtjhyg?" I gaped at her like a country bumpkin.

Then she tried it slower and louder, at this mentally retarded person.

"Do you speak English?"

The indignation was dripping from my voice as I answered, "Of course I do!"

And that was my introduction to Glasgow English.

I had a taste of more of the same when our driver who was driving us to Edinburgh tried to explain some of the scenery to us, and we would just try to read his lips and nod away smiling, because for the life of us, we could not figure out what he was saying. He kept asking me about some collar and I kept trying to figure out where that fitted into our conversation, because we had been discussing neither shirts nor dogs. Then it dawned on me that he was asking me if we found Glasgow cooler!

It is a rather humbling experience when after a lifetime of speaking and writing English fluently, you run into the wall of regional dialects and are made to appear a fool or a retard.


The flight from Dubai had been very comfortable though a bit long. Thankfully I had been bumped up to business class, so it was okay. I spent the long flight watching movies ("I Could Never Be Your Woman", "Charlie Bartlett"). We actually landed a couple of minutes before schedule (12:30pm), and the pilot announced this fact as if expecting an applause!

So after we had cleared immigration & customs, and collected out baggage which didn't take very long since I had just 1 small case, we ventured out and were met by the aforementioned driver who ushered us into a large sleek Merc. Hmmm!

We stopped just outside the airport to check out a hotel called Glynhill for lunch arrangements for the large group that would be following us tomorrow in the same flight. Nice hotel, but a tad expensive. We didn't think the group would be sufficiently hungry for a full-fledged 3 course meal. So then we went on to check other places, like a roadside service station which had a nice convenience store serving big sandwiches, juices and coffee.

After that, we continued onwards to Edinburgh. On both sides of the road were undulating green valleys full of bales of hay and sheep. Not many cows though. The weather was pretty good, with overcast skies and quite a bit of sunshine.

We reached Edinburgh at around 3pm. The Scotsman where we were staying is a very different kind of a hotel. First of all, it was never built to be one. It was the headquarters of The Scotsman newspaper, and was later converted into a hotel. So the entire design of this place is bewildering. The rooms are very comfortable and impressive though they were obviously some poor editor's office once upon a time. The Editor's suite where I was put up is a grand old place with wooden panelling all over the rooms, and small knobs indicating where there is a cupboard built cleverly into the wooden panel. There is even a secret hatch through which one can slide out the room service plates once one is finished with the meals, or put out one's shoes to be polished in the evening. The bedroom window looks out over the railway station a couple of stories below us, and one can gaze upon the stately structure of The Balmoral, another hotel nearby.

All this was not discovered by me immediately, since we had to rush out by 4pm to examine a venue for the Grand Dinner to be held on the last night of the event. And what a venue it turned out to be!

The Royal Yacht Britannia is a decommissioned Royal Yacht previously belonging to the Queen. It was decommissioned in 1997, and as the story goes, the Queen shed a tear when it was finally docked at its berth in Edinburgh port.

We were met by a lovely blonde (no, it's not relevant to the story, but still!) girl who took us around the boat and showed us the arrangements for the Grand Dinner. I will not go into details now, but let this be said, the plans were really Grand!

While discussing all the details over a cup of tea served in a monogrammed tea set (but of course!), I espied some mementos in the wall shelves, and asked the tour guide if there was a tourist shop on the boat. Of course there was. But since it wouldn't be open during our dinner time on Friday, I asked to be taken to it afterward so as to do some "impromptu" shopping. Having done that, we left the boat.

In the evening, we went off to The Living Room, a restaurant which would be hosting our group later this week. A nice cozy place, with live music. I had a grilled salmon washed down with 1664 beer, and then had a shot of 10 year old Macallan. Lovely!